Karen Strode's wardrobe confirms her inherited distaste for All Hallows' Eve.
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00:00The sheer sensory assault of a movie can often present audiences from failing to pick up
00:04on the wide importance that is basically hidden in plain sight. And this is certainly true
00:09in the horror genre, which doesn't always suggest that it's got subtle storytelling
00:13to offer, but that is absolutely not true. And that's what we're here to talk about
00:16today as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 Horror Movie Moments More
00:20Important Than You First Realized.
00:24Number 10. The New Australian Flag, Event Horizon
00:28Now Paul W. Anderson's Event Horizon is such a dizzying trip of a sci-fi horror movie
00:33that nobody could blame you for failing to pick up on one of its more unexpectedly meaningful
00:37details. Case in point, you probably didn't notice that the Australian flag on protagonist
00:41Dr. Williams' uniform is different from the nation's current flag. The real flag
00:46is a blue field with six stars on it and the British Union Jack flag situated in the top
00:51left corner. But in Event Horizon, the flag on Dr. Williams' jacket contains a different
00:55flag altogether. This is actually the Australian Aboriginal flag, and suggests that in the
01:00film's first approaching future of 2047, that Australia reckoned with its colonial
01:05past by renouncing its status as a British constitutional monarchy. It's a fascinating
01:10and weirdly wholesome piece of low-key worldbuilding in an otherwise horrific movie, and one that
01:15was apparently suggested by Sam Neill himself, who wished to pay tribute to Australia's
01:19original settlers. Considering that there have been increasing calls in recent years
01:23to change Australia's flag in reality, it's entirely possible that Event Horizon ends
01:27up being totally on the money.
01:299. The Date of Kevin's Last Memory – Split
01:34In M. Night Shyamalan's terrific split, you might recall that Kevin Wendell Crumb,
01:38played by James McAvoy, tells Casey that the last day that he remembers is September 18,
01:432014, which he believes to be the current date. Now this may seem like a totally random
01:48date at first glance, but it's actually a very specific choice that surreptitiously
01:52nods to real-world events relevant to the movie's title. September 18, 2014 was also
01:57the date of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, where Scotland voted on whether
02:02or not to split from the United Kingdom. Given that James McAvoy is himself Scottish, it's
02:07entirely possible that he suggested the date to Shyamalan as a reference to his home nation's
02:11political situation. With that in mind, it is relatively surprising that not a single
02:15one of Kevin's 23 other personalities ended up actually being Scottish.
02:208. The Changing Colour of Pennywise's Eyes – IT
02:24Audiences en masse were so likely traumatised by the opening sequence of 2017's IT that
02:30they likely didn't notice a vital character detail hiding in plain sight. You see, during
02:35the movie's first scene, poor Georgie is preyed upon by Pennywise the dancing clown,
02:39who ends up luring the young boy towards a drain and then devouring him. While Pennywise
02:43cons Georgie by presenting a fun, appealing demeanour, he has one majorly insidious trick
02:49up his sleeve, and that is changing the colour of his eyes. As we know from the rest of the
02:54movie, Pennywise's natural eye colour is yellow, yet during this scene his eyes are
02:58blue whilst talking to Georgie. And the reason for this? Well, Georgie's brother Bill has
03:02blue eyes, and so Pennywise changes his eyes to a colour that, on an unconscious level,
03:07would help lower Georgie's guard and encourage him to trust Pennywise. This is actually explained
03:12in Stephen King's original novel, and adds yet another disturbing layer to Pennywise's
03:17predatory nature.
03:187. The Opening Mural – Midsommar
03:22Ari Aster's unforgettable horror film Midsommar opens with a fleeting glimpse of a gorgeous,
03:27yet disturbingly painted mural which contains a number of eerie and unsettling sights. While
03:31viewers might initially assume that this is simply some garden-variety creepy shit intended
03:36to throw them off balance from the movie's opening seconds, it's actually a veiled
03:40breakdown of basically the film's entire plot. The most distinctive visuals in the
03:44mural include Danny and Christian arguing, the Swedish cult elders jumping off a cliff,
03:48the pied piper who leads the movie's American tourists to their doom, Mark wearing a jester's
03:53outfit, and the presence of five skeletons representing the five outsiders that are killed
03:57by the cultists. The mural also offers far more metaphorical imagery for audiences to
04:02read into, but it's nevertheless fascinating that Aster included almost all of the movie's
04:07major plot beats up front, even if their context wouldn't be made fully clear until
04:10the film's end.
04:126. Rose Challenges the Cop – Get Out
04:16Jordan Peele's Get Out is one of the most dense and detail-packed horror films of the
04:20last decade, a movie that hugely rewards repeated viewings by revealing the many secrets that
04:25Peele had hidden in plain sight. And one such scene occurs early on in the movie, where
04:29Chris and his girlfriend Rose hit a deer whilst driving and a police officer is then called
04:33out to the scene. Despite Rose being the one driving, the cop asks to see Chris'
04:37ID, at which point Rose stops Chris from handing over his ID, insisting that he doesn't need
04:42to as he wasn't the one behind the wheel. Now on the surface, it simply seems like Rose
04:46is sticking up for her black boyfriend against a suspect-at-best police officer, but once
04:51Rose's true colours are revealed in the film's third act, it's retrospectively clear that
04:55her intentions were far from benevolent. With the knowledge that Rose is actually in on
04:59her family's deranged scheme to kidnap black people and hijack their bodies, it's evident
05:04that Rose wanted to prevent the cop from running Chris' ID and creating an electronic paper
05:08trail that would then throw suspicion on her once Chris went missing. Even on a second
05:13viewing, this is easily missed, but a seemingly typical, albeit racist, encounter with a cop
05:18is far more calculated than it first seems.
05:21Number 5. The Rotten Corn – The Witch Robert Eggers delivered a deliciously delirious
05:27folk horror film in The Witch, which is certainly a piece that rewards those who pay close attention,
05:32though you can be forgiven for failing to appreciate the significance of all of that
05:35rotten corn. Now early on in the film, New England settler William and his family are
05:40shown struggling to grow enough crops to make it through the winter, with their corn appearing
05:43to have rotted. Yet this rot is actually ergot, a fungus that grows on the rye and related
05:49plants and can cause ergotism in humans who consume it, which is a form of fungal poisoning
05:53which can, amongst other things, induce psychotic visions. As such, this might tangibly explain
05:58the film's increasingly surreal events – that the family were simply succumbing to ergotism,
06:03and none of this was actually real. Now given that ergot is often suggested as one of the
06:07potential causes of mass hysteria during the Salem Witch Trials, it's certainly a fitting
06:12suggestion and one that purposefully is placed in the film by the director. Now this doesn't
06:16mean that The Witch's supernatural happenings are 100% hallucinatory, but it does lend fascinating
06:21meaning and context to the shots of inedible corn that otherwise seem relatively standard
06:26and benign.
06:274. The Crazy Norwegian – The Thing
06:31The iconic opening sequence of John Carpenter's sci-fi masterpiece The Thing sees a Norwegian
06:36helicopter pilot chasing a sled dog towards the American outpost on Antarctica, where
06:41it's greeted by R.J. McCready and the rest of the American team. Now the pilot shouts
06:45something in Norwegian before taking aim at the dog, wounding an American by accident
06:49and then being killed by another in self-defence. For the audience, it's an intriguing yet
06:53confusing opening, with viewers likely left to initially conclude that this man himself
06:58has been overcome by the parasitic alien lifeform known as The Thing. Yet, as anyone who can
07:02speak even a little Norwegian will tell you, his dialogue actually translates as,
07:06"'Get the hell away from that thing! That's not a dog, it's some sort of thing! It's
07:10imitating a dog, it isn't real! Get away, you idiots!'
07:14Needless to say, if McCready or any of his men understood what the pilot was saying,
07:17it would have been considerably easier for them to deal with this alien entity straight
07:21away.
07:223. Yara's Clamshell E-Reader – It Follows
07:26Now It Follows is such a moody, dread-soaked piece of work that it's easy to forget that
07:31the film never really fully commits to an explicit time period. Instead, it exists in
07:35this eerily ambiguous point in time. Now, there are various touchstones throughout the
07:38film that point to different eras. The TVs are always showing 1950s films and shows,
07:43while Jay's home has a distinctly 1970s decor. And yet, flying totally counter to
07:48all of this is the brief glimpse that we catch of Yara's e-reader device. Yara is reading
07:52a book on what resembles a clamshell make-up compact, a piece of technology that seems
07:56both extremely modern compared to the dated CRT TVs and corded phones throughout the film,
08:01and yet so completely alien to our own present where smartphones and Kindles are ubiquitous.
08:06This very subtly places It Follows in its own distinct and unclear time period, or universe
08:11even, which only further enhances the sheer strangeness of filmmaker David Robert Mitchell's
08:15twisted vision.
08:172. Karen Wears a Christmas Sweater on Halloween – Halloween 2018
08:23Now here's something that you probably never thought about. Did you notice that in the
08:26new Halloween movies, Laurie Strode's daughter, Karen, wears a Christmas sweater? Now, given
08:31that the film is set on Halloween, it really makes no sense at all for anyone to be wearing
08:35a Christmas garb almost an entire two months before the holiday. Even the most eager Christmas
08:39fans know that's totally insane, right? Yet, there's actually a more meaningful
08:43reason for this. Because Karen grew up as the daughter of Laurie, she shares a disdain
08:47for Halloween and so decides to ignore it, instead skipping straight over it to Christmas.
08:52Writer-director David Gordon Green even confirmed this himself in interviews. He said,
08:56"'There's that little sign of rebellion. On Halloween she wears a Christmas sweater
09:00so that she doesn't celebrate.' And actress Judy Greer, meanwhile, added,
09:03"'That was David's idea, which I loved. We decided that Karen hates Halloween so much
09:08that she just skips it and Thanksgiving and in her own head goes right to Christmas. Like,
09:12as soon as the tiny little bite-sized candies come out at the drugstores for trick-or-treaters,
09:16she pulls out her Christmas sweater and is like, "'Nope, nope, I celebrate Christmas,
09:19I'm just skipping right to Christmas.'" It's an intriguing character flourish that
09:23slightly tells us a lot more about Karen's mindset than the film itself actually fully
09:27lets on.
09:281. Hannibal Lecter's Deliberate Blinks – The Silence of the Lambs
09:34One of the oft-repeated claims about Anthony Hopkins' Oscar-winning performance as Hannibal
09:38Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs is that the actor never blinked on-screen whilst playing
09:42the part, in an attempt to enhance the psychopath's inherently unsettling presence. It's a claim
09:47that's even been perpetrated by Hopkins himself in interviews, despite the fact that
09:51it's blatantly not true.
09:52Even the most casual cursory examination of Hopkins' 20-ish minutes of screen time throughout
09:57the masterful horror-thriller will confirm that he does indeed blink, albeit markedly
10:01less so than your average person. It's clear from watching Hopkins' scenes that
10:05the actor chose his blinks carefully, using them as exclamation marks to punctuate the
10:09meaning of whatever's going on. As such, when we see Lecter blink emphatically after
10:14dropping the iconic fava beans and a nice Chianti one-liner, he also blinks with a slow
10:18deliberation during the quid-pro-quo scene as Clarice tells the story of her father's
10:23murder. It's something you probably didn't consciously pick up on, but your brain likely
10:27did, that Lecter blinked only in calculated, periodic ways that seem almost inhuman, and
10:33it adds yet another level of creepiness to an already all-timer cinematic skin-crawler.
10:37And there we go my friends, those were 10 Horror Movie Moments More Important Than You
10:41Realised. I hope that you enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about
10:45it down in the comments section below. As always, I've been Jules, you can go follow
10:48me over on Twitter at RetroJay but the O is a zero, or you can follow me over on Instagram
10:53where it's the same handle, RetroJay but the O is a zero, and I hope to see you over
10:56there. But before I go, I just want to say one thing. I want to end this video by reminding
11:00you of something very, very important that you may have missed in your day-to-day life,
11:03and that is just to be kind to yourself and to take a break every now and again, alright?
11:07I know that we can be gunning for the finish line all the time at the moment, but it is
11:10very, very healthy and definitely encouraged to take a break every once in a while, relax,
11:15recover, recharge, and then approach situations with fresh eyes and a fresh mentality. Hopefully
11:20doing this will help you achieve the goal of living a healthy and happy life, and that
11:23is all I want for you, my friend. Now go out there and smash it after a cup of tea.
11:27As always, I've been Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak
11:30to you soon.